Personally, I would like to have tough federal laws for ALL state districting. I live in Massachusetts, and the same gerrymandering hijinks occur here to help the Democrats. We have multiple districts that aren’t one contiguous body, for example.

Pre-approval of voting changes should be mandatory nationwide. Institutionalized racist and classist discrimination is by no means limited to the South, and implementing this kind of mitigation on a state-by-state basis only perpetuates that fallacy.

Yes, something like 81% of all complaints made under the Voting Rights Act came from Southern states, and yes, Texas for one is already shoving the voter ID policy through, but addressing the problem only where it’s at its worst is not sufficient. If you had a leaky roof, would you only patch up the biggest holes?

Nobody is saying that discrimination is “limited” to The South, but it is much more vigorous there in all ways as voter id (and everything else) illustrates. Southern liberals need to quit getting butthurt about that, accept it, and work to change it. The fact that all the Southern states are elated and rushing to implement their voter id laws perfectly illustrates why they are the larger focus of voter rights issues. Voter rights need to be enforced and expanded everywhere though. Of course.

“Southern liberals”? This is a decision made at the federal level that will have drastic effects nationwide. The Southern states are undeniably the worst and most frequent offenders, but why should the rest of the country be any less accountable? Legislation designed to uphold and ensure voter’s rights should be enforced in every state in the Union, not just the ones where the problem is most obvious.

If you take the privilege of voting seriously, I for the life of me can not understand what the problem with providing a photo ID is. If you are not part of active society, why would you want to vote, and if you are, by definition you have to have the one piece of ID that identifies you as an interested participant in our civilized world. Voting is of utmost importance, maybe the most important duty you can wield as part of our representative Republic, giving ascent to our leaders as our rightful governing authority. Why else would you vote?

If you take the privilege of voting seriously, I for the life of me can not understand what the problem with providing a photo ID is.

Photo IDs that are accepted under these racist schemes are sometimes very difficult to obtain. They may be expensive, thus making the law a poll tax. They may be issued only by other agencies that put every possible obstacle in the way of “the wrong sort of people.” It’s a Jim Crow law.

And yet it’s very easy for some people to get IDs (middle-class folks) and very hard for others (the poor and elderly). It’s harder than you think, 10% of voting-age Americans do not have photo ID. So, you have one class of people who can easily participate, and another who can’t.

Also, voting is a right, not a privilege.

Finally, let’s flip this around: if you care about living in a democracy, why would you make it hard for people to vote?